immaterial bodies

From The Hyperrestrained Order (HRO) by Wayne Lim

immaterial bodies features works by four Singaporean artists exploring the connections between bodies and four domains: the shifting urban landscape, systems of control, post-human transformations, and alternative kinships. In doing so, the exhibition looks at new possibilities for existence and relationships, ideas which are especially relevant in a world made more precarious, anxious and chaotic in light of Covid-19’s global impact.

Titled immaterial bodies, the show curated by Seet Yun Teng is the recipient of Objectifs’ Curator Open Call, an annual programme that encourages innovative curatorial approaches to lens-based art by giving emerging curators an opportunity to realise an exhibition with professional and financial support. This year marks the programme’s second edition.

immaterial bodies presents the following works by four artists using different lens-based mediums:

hancur badan dikandung tanah by ila: In this moving image work, the artist explores the impact of constant erasure and disappearing sites of memory on the body, intersecting the body with barricaded construction sites in Singapore and questioning what layers of ourselves are lost when the physical spaces we occupy cease to exist.

The Hyperrestrained Order (HRO) by Wayne Lim: In this audiovisual installation, the artist examines the symbolism and mechanisms of discipline and control in Singapore, manifesting in its citizen bodies.

larval limbic by Weixin Quek Chong: In this installation with sound, the artist speculates on ideas of morphing and transformation, drawing influences from fashion, biological adaptation and body modification to consider the appearance and presentation of bodies, and in doing, imagines possibilities of gender fluidity and post-humanness.

Miss Q by Denise Yap: In this audiovisual work, the orchid, representative of eugenic hybridity and national narratives, is re-germinated in its technological embodiment. Miss Q offers an interconnected, technological future in which alternative kinships and non-linear relationships between beings can take place.